David Furnish hits back at Germaine Greer in surrogacy row

David Furnish has responded after Germaine Greer rudely weighed in on his family life – and the message was abundantly clear: mind your own damn business.

No stranger to stoking the fires of controversy, Greer took offence to Sir Elton John’s husband being named “mother” on the birth certificates of their sons.

Elton and David are parents to nine-year-old Zachary and Elijah, seven, who are both believed to have been born to the same California-based surrogate.

In an interview with The Oldie, Greer, 81, expressed her condemnation for “all-male” families.

“Their two sons were born to two women, but David Furnish is the ‘mother’ on their birth certificates,” she begins.

“How did we give this title up?” Greer exclaims. “Are we going to have a world where families can be all-male?”

 

 

 

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Dear Ms Greer, I’ll never understand what makes people like you publicly criticise something you clearly know nothing about. Isn’t there enough negativity in the world already? The extraordinary woman who carried both our sons is a private person. She’s not a publicity seeking person like yourself. Collectively, we decided to remove the surrogate’s name from our son’s birth certificate to protect her identity. This turned out to be an extremely wise move, as a journalist managed to illegally acquire a copy of our son’s birth certificate from the registry office. A spectacular feat, given we hadn’t even received the very first copy ourselves. The same newspaper that has run your misguided rantings also published the full details from that birth certificate online. May I respectfully ask you to butt out and mind your own business? This is a private family matter, for which you have no right to publicly level criticism. @eltonjohn

A post shared by David Furnish (@davidfurnish) on Sep 17, 2020 at 1:48am PDT

After spotting the story on the Mail Online, Furnish, 57, decided to school the Australian feminist on her out-dated opinions.

“I’ll never understand what makes people like you publicly criticise something you clearly know nothing about. Isn’t there enough negativity in the world already?” he wrote on Instagram.

“The extraordinary woman who carried both our sons is an extremely private person. She’s not a publicity seeking person like yourself,” Furnish continues. “Collectively, we decided to remove the surrogate’s name from our son’s birth certificate to protect her identity.”

The filmmaker claims that somebody illegally gained access to the birth certificates in the first place.

“This turned out to be an extremely wise move, as a journalist managed to illegally acquire a copy of our son’s birth certificate from the registry office,” he adds. “A spectacular feat, given we hadn’t even received the very first copy ourselves.”

Sir Elton and David – who have been together for more than 25 years – tied the knot in 2014.